25 Jun, 2025

Mastercard Taps Chainlink to Provide Direct, Onchain Fiat-To-Crypto Conversions for Cardholders

Plenty of Visa and Mastercard partnerships aimed at making it easier for consumers to spend their crypto have been unveiled in recent years. On Tuesday, Chainlink said it's partnered with Mastercard to make it easier for users to buy crypto using their card, unlocking direct, compliant, and fully onchain fiat-to-crypto swaps.Through the partnership cardholders across the globe will be able to "purchase crypto assets directly onchain through a secure fiat-to-crypto conversion," Chainlink and Mastercard said in a statement. The move is designed to remove "long-standing barriers that have kept mainstream users from accessing the onchain economy."The vast majority of Visa and Mastercard's crypto partnerships to date have been designed around issuing a branded card that allows people to effortlessly spend the crypto they are holding in a particular digital wallet through fiat conversions. This includes recent crypto-card tie ups from Uphold and the Sam Altman-backed World project."People want to be able to easily connect to the digital assets ecosystem, and vice versa," said Mastercard Executive Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Assets Raj Dhamodharan in a statement. "We're unlocking a secure and innovative way to revolutionize onchain commerce and drive the broader adoption of crypto assets."Over 3 Billion CardholdersTo make it possible for "over 3 billion cardholders in the Mastercard user base" to use their card to buy crypto, Chainlink is working with, or leveraging technology provided by Zerohash, Swapper Finance, Shift4 Payments, XSwap, and the Uniswap protocol, according to Tuesday's statement.And it appears that Mastercard and Chainlink's initiative to allow cardholders to buy crypto directly has a lot going on under the hood. According to the statement, Swapper Finance will leverage XSwap, a decentralized exchange embedded in the Chainlink ecosystem, through an integration between Zerohash and Shift4 Payments. Zerohash will oversee the core compliance and custody features to ensure regulated fiat into crypto conversions while Shift4 will provide "seamless card processing" using Uniswap and other liquidity sources. Altogether, the "technologies create a unified, compliant, and intuitive user experience that brings crypto access directly to mainstream payment cardholders," the firms wrote. "This was a complex and multilayered collaboration," Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov said in a statement.

20 Jun, 2025

Coinbase Stock Still Rising On Stablecoin News, Senate GENIUS Bill

Coinbase stock continued to advance early Friday following its Wednesday breakout. Shares of the crypto exchange rocketed past a buy point after announcing a new stablecoin payments solution. The Senate on Tuesday passed a highly-anticipated stablecoin bill. Legacy payments stocks including Visa, Mastercard and PayPal fell.Dubbed the GENIUS act, the legislation provides a framework to regulate digital tokens that are pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar and further legitimizes cryptocurrencies. The bill’s requirements include full reserve backing for issuers, monthly audits and anti-money laundering compliance, among other regulations.The legislation passed in a 68–30 vote. It still needs to pass the Republican-held House.“For the Senate to recognize the power of U.S. dollar stablecoins — and do so with notable bipartisan support — has been years in the making,” said Nathan McCauley, CEO of federally chartered crypto bank, Anchorage Digital. He said that the bill will lead to greater changes in the industry.“As stablecoin legislation continues to advance, GENIUS lays a strong foundation for lawmakers to make progress on comprehensive, bipartisan market structure reform,” McCauley said.Coinbase Stablecoin PaymentsCrypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) on Wednesday afternoon announced a new payments solution for stablecoins, called Coinbase Payments. The solution allows customers to make payments on various commerce platforms.Coinbase Payments is already live with Shopify (SHOP). The integration allows for 24/7 USDC stablecoin payments across the Shopify ecosystem.Other retailers, including Walmart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN), are exploring whether to issue their own stabelcoins in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported last Friday citing unnamed sources. Expedia Group (EXPE) and some airlines have discussed potential stablecoin efforts as well, according to the WSJ.Coinbase stock climbed 2.3% early Friday.Shares closed up 16.3% Wednesday at 295.29, ending around mid-February levels. In the process, shares overtook a 277.01 buy point and rallied past the entry’s buy zone, which ran to 290.86. The result is that COIN stock is up almost 19% so far this year.Shopify stock dipped Friday and eased slightly Wednesday to trend lower away from a buy zone. Shares attempted to break out above the 112.38 handle buy point on June 11 but quickly fell from the buy zone.SHOP stock is down a fraction so far this year.Payments firms traded lower following the news.Dow Jones giant Visa (V) was flat early Friday. Visa retreated 4.9% Wednesday and is on track for its second weekly decline in a row. V stock traded in a buy zone at record highs last week before shares fell on Friday. Visa is up about 8% so far this year.Rival Mastercard (MA) rose slightly Friday. Shares fell 5.4% Wednesday, back near early May levels. Mastercard stock has mounted a strong rebound since April to a record high 594.71 on June 13. Still, the stock is only up 2.3% in 2025.PayPal (PYPL) was flat Friday morning. PYPL stock slumped about 3% Wednesday, adding to its 19.7% drop this year.